Rod Lamkey/AP Photo
FBI Director Kash Patel speaks during a news conference, March 27, 2025, in Manassas, Virginia.
The FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan Friday morning. The supposed reason, as FBI Director Kash Patel boasted on Twitter/X, was “evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.” (He later deleted the tweet.)
The immigrant in question is named Eduardo Flores Ruiz. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, Dugan allegedly “directed the ICE agents to Chief Judge Carl Ashley’s office. During that time, sources said, Dugan allowed the defendant to leave the courtroom through a side door, down a private hallway and into a public area.”
Five legal experts told the Sentinel that they did not think what Dugan did constituted a crime, but that it would ultimately come down to intent. If prosecutors could prove that she was intentionally helping Ruiz evade arrest, that might be a crime. But there are many reasons she might have directed him to a public area, and it wouldn’t make much sense to help him avoid ICE—after all, he was quickly arrested later anyway.
Whatever the case, the Trump administration deserves zero benefit of the doubt here. It has evinced utter contempt for due process and the rule of law since Inauguration Day. It has deported numerous legal residents, most notably Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to an El Salvador torture dungeon, and is openly disobeying a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to bring Garcia back. The ongoing mass layoffs of federal workers and outright dismantling of legislatively mandated agencies being carried out by Elon Musk and DOGE is blatantly unconstitutional.
As Radley Balko reports, after a Texas attorney gave some casual legal advice to some unauthorized immigrants—unquestionably constitutionally protected speech—Trump goons showed up at his house, remotely disabled his Wi-Fi, refused to identify themselves or show their badges, and accused him of “obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.”
Trump also recently ordered a Department of Justice investigation into the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue—a flagrant violation of department norms and an obvious political persecution. He recently pardoned a Nevada Republican who was convicted of stealing $70,000 in funds meant to honor police officers killed in the line of duty and spending it on plastic surgery for herself. The president himself was convicted of 34 felonies.
So this arrest is obviously meant as intimidation. The fact that Dugan was arrested in court rather than being served an indictment and being allowed to surrender voluntarily is itself a major escalation. (Incidentally, Donald Trump was never arrested for any of his dozens of felony indictments.) An arrest is humiliating and shocking, especially of a judge in her own court—and doubly so in this case, as national media immediately jumped on the story. It sends a clear message that nobody is safe, not even judges, if they get in the way of Trump’s deportation machine. ICE clearly wants to use courtrooms as handy places to round up immigrants of any kind, and if judges object, they’ll be arrested.
